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I want to start a conversation about modern jazz harmony and how we guitarists sometimes forget that there were tunes written after 1960!
In the late '70s, I studied at the university of miami and among other courses, I took a composition course from ronnie miller. His writing influenced me greatly and if you study his work, you will see that it draws from the same branch of the jazz tree which produced chord movements of artists such as Ritchie Bierach, John Abercrombie, Ralph Towner, Dave Liebman?, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, etc.
Here's a link to one of Ronnie's tunes which epitomize this type of harmonic movement: Sample Flash Music Player Embed Code
Most jazz guitarists have difficulty comping through this type of chord progression, much less understand its chordal movement or improvise over it.
We should collectively rectify this situation!Last edited by jzucker; 01-14-2014 at 12:42 PM.
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01-14-2014 11:54 AM
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Seems like an interesting tune...a cursory glance shows me some phrygian, mixolydian, melodic minor ideas...I'd be lying if I told you I could go in cold on something like this.
I think guitar players tend to come to jazz later than many other instruments...
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I'd probably attack this with a lot of stacked fourth voicings. All the sus chords would seem to be looking for that anyway. I would definitely try to stay away from traditional triadic or seventh chord voicings that would imply functional movement.
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Smart approach, I'd think.
To go further, the nature of the guitar itself seems to affect this, and the way we learn guitar...We're so attached to "chords," and while a chart for a tune like this has chord symbols, it's not as concrete...it's more about what those symbols imply.
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It's kind of hard to play Maj7#5 chords with 4th voicings though.
Originally Posted by Boston Joe
I wouldn't necessarily voice these types of tunes exclusively with any particular type of chord voicing.
I think it's more important to understand the functional harmony in addition to what voicings you should use.
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Well...I would approach it from the idea of keeping voicing pretty small.
Like just a G triad for that Ebmaj7#5. ..
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you can do that but what makes the voicing is the dissonance so you want to add the Eb underneath it.
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Right, but I'd want to know my role in a group first before I started getting too big with voicings...If somebody else is hitting that Eb, I could just play a B and D and sound great...of course I could put that Eb on top too...x x 9 7 4 x...mmmmm....
I wanna play this tune now...Last edited by mr. beaumont; 01-14-2014 at 03:28 PM.
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Just a quick glance ...at bar 7, the A half dim with natural 2nd, could be labeled C min Maj 7/A....a more familiar name to most of us I would assume .Point is bad labeling, or unfamiliar labels make things look more esoteric.
Marc
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The chord is functioning as a ii chord in that sequence. Sometimes dumbing the music down to the lowest common denominator is not the best way to notate something. At some point, you have to make the assumption that the musicians playing your music can read music (no need for tablature) and that they are on the same page as you regarding modern (circa 1976) chord progressions. Originally Posted by marcwv
And Ronnie Miller's been teaching jazz composition at the u of miami for 40 years so I think I trust his nomenclature!
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Yes ,good point! Where it's going is more important!
Marc
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A few thoughts:
Holdsworth plays some voicings where he'd voice maybe two notes on the top two string and two on the bottom two strings.
The chords sound really big because of how they're voiced, although there are only four notes involved.
Good voicings can create the illusion that there are more notes present. When you have a good bass player, you just play the juicy notes in the chord, pick good voicings one after the other and the listeners ears will "fill in the blanks".
Easier said than done.
I don't have much experience with such tunes myself. If I tried the tune in the OP, I'd probably get lost.
It's a whole new territory. Ditch the II-V-I licks, those chords "resolve" ,or not, in a different way.
I think the reason why so few guitarists get into that style is that those teaching it are mostly piano players or horn players. I don't see many guitarists teaching improvisation beyond the American Songbook.
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The thing I like about "Modern Jazz Harmony" is that the ambiguity of the chords enables many choices for improv, so good players can be very creative and play with freedom.
Starting a group for "Modern Jazz Harmony", but starting with simple examples would be a good idea.
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I'd write out some chord charts (in notation then in box diagram form) then from there I'd play with some different voicings that are "leaner" than what is written possibly using close-position voicings to get that delightful dissonance.
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To the OP, what exactly do you mean by "modern jazz harmony"? Are you talking about modern sounding chord voicings? Like quartal voicings?
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all of the above. I'm talking about harmonic structures based on chords other than the standard ionian mode.
Melodic, harmonic minor and other scales.
I'm talking about slash chords and poly chords. Basically a continuation of what seemed to die in the '70s as the explorations of ECM music gave way to more fusion and eventually smooth jazz.
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This Dave Liebman book is one of those in Jack's links. It's really deep and covers a lot of territory: A chromatic approach to jazz harmony and melody.
There are a few tunes that could be good 1st steps towards chord progressions that go beyond 'functional' harmony. Maybe Dolphin Dance by Herbie Hancock (Looooooove that tune) and Steve Swallow's Falling Grace. And then all the Shorter tunes and Liebman/Beirach and on and on...Last edited by Ronstuff; 01-18-2014 at 06:54 PM.
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This is what I'd do for starters on that tune. I have displaced some of the extensions down an octave to keep it all in the same general area on the fingerboard.
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It's great to catch up - and I understand the use of the word "modern" in this context, but it's also good to remember that there has been a lot of creativity, exploration, and growth in jazz composition SINCE the 70s and 80s.
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The point is that 95% of what is discussed on the internet is '50s harmony. Music will evolve but for some reason, the various jazz guitar boards on the internet seem to be focused on a very narrow time period of the music. Originally Posted by JakeAcci
This extremely important part of jazz - and music in general - is generally ignored.
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Music and harmony from this era is great! A lot of interesting stuff happening now as well.
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because it is advanced...and 95% of folks find the older, conventional harmony easier to play. Originally Posted by jzucker
And I can say that because I'm in that 95%.
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so post some charts of modern harmony and rhythm. Educate us Originally Posted by JakeAcci
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The problem is there is really no one style of modern harmony.
It's like anything, you need to spend a good long time practicing it. Most of the casual jazz gigs I'm aware of are structured around standards because playing originals can be very tricky. The harmony I tend to write, for example, works in a very different way to the examples here, and many other people's harmony would be different again.
As a result, musicians tend to cluster around a certain composer - they get to know someone's music intimately and be able to play it - thinking of Mark Turner and Kurt Rosenwinkel's long association for example.
The alternative is to write some tunes based on a more conventional jazz language. I think many composers have a few simpler songs they can pull out on pick up gigs to personalise the show a bit.Last edited by christianm77; 01-18-2014 at 09:09 PM.
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Important points:
1) The repertoire of much straight jazz is based on pop songs of the pre-rock era. It has to some extent 'fossilised' despite the best efforts of Brad Mehldau. Therefore the harmony of these songs is not really jazz harmony per se - jazz harmony such as it is kind of what we do to them.
2) Non standard jazz repertoire is often written by a band member, unless it is one of the modern compositions that have achieved 'modern jazz standard' status - e.g. Aaron Park's Nemesis and Kurt's Zhivago seem to be heading this way. Needless to say no one knows these songs outside of jazz circles, however a song like 'All the Things You Are' is STILL known outside of jazz as a song, even today.
3) Modern pop and rock compositions seem difficult to shoehorn into the role of jazz standard. I'd be interested to know why. It may be because a lot of these songs are heavily based in the arrangement - be interested to know why people think this is.
4) Contemporary jazz harmony does not exist in its own little bubble - its influences range from Middle Eastern music, 20th century classical, modern pop and anything else you can imagine, depending on composer!
5) Therefore I'm not even sure there is thing as 'jazz harmony' :-)
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Well, here's the chords to one of my tunes...
Cmaj7 / Db7 #9 #5 / Am11 / Ab7#11
Fmaj7#11 / Bb7#11 / Am11 / E7#5
Am7/ Cmaj7/ Db7#5#9 / Fmaj7
Bbmaj7#11 / Am9 / Fmaj7#11 / G13
Am11 / Am11/ Am11/Am11
Bbmaj7#11/ Bbmaj7#11/ Bbmaj7#11/ Bbmaj7#11
repeat Am to Bbmaj7#11 sequence
FMAJ7#11 / Fmaj7#11 / G13 / G13
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Well, my Real Book is half full of modern modal tunes. Kind of Blue was a long time ago, and lots of what we're talking about starts there. It is curious how much focus we put on pre-modal repertoire in this forum considering all the great modern jazz standards written by Shorter, Hancock, Joe Henderson, Coltrane, etc. Modern players wrote modern standards that have been around for 50+ years. It's not all about old pop and show tunes.
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Me too Jeff, it is very hard for me to get a groove going for newer jazz music but I do enjoy listening to some of it. When I first started listening to John Coltranes' music, I thought it sounded like a very skilled sax player doing scale and arpeggio studies. I think that was because I didn't understand it or how to analyze it. Later, after Howard Roberts pointed out some of the the characteristics and theory of Johns' music, I really became interested and began to enjoy it very much. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
wiz
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Real book tunes with non-bop/standard harmony one might be expected to play on casual gigs. Excluding stuff like Coltrane changes as that's a bit more of a known quantity:
Beatrice
Inner Urge
Yes or No (the first few bars of the A - the rest is ii-V-I city)
Ju-ju
Deluge (and most other Wayne TBH)
Very Early (Very Tricky!)
Icarus
James
Bright Size Life
Any more for any more?
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Also Jobim's harmony, while very tonal, is based more on bassline movement than bop style harmony, so many players find it tricky.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Not "modern" perse, but a few years ago on another forum I was curious to get a list of common tunes going that had few or no ii V progressions. Again, obviously many of these tunes are still pretty old:
500 Miles High
All Blues
Beatrice
Cantaloupe Island
Fall
Footprints
Freedom Jazz Dance
Gloria's step
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
Impressions
Inchworm
Infant Eyes
Inner Urge
Jinrikisha
Juju
Little Sunflower
Maiden Voyage
Mercy Mercy
Milestones
Moondance
Mr. P.C.
Naima
Nardis
Nefertiti
Old Devil Moon
Passion Dance
Quicksilver
So What
Song for My Father
Syeeda's Song Flute
The Jody Grind
The Peacocks
Time Remembered
Tones for Joan's Bones
Very Early
Watermelon Man
Well, You Needn't
Wild Flower
Witch Hunt
Monk is also a blind spot for many jazz musicians as the vocabulary needed to play over monk tunes is very different than either bebop or the modal/shorter era kind of harmony.
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those are definitely cool but not really harmonically advanced like the tunes from Bierach, Towner, Abercrombie or Ronnie Miller. Originally Posted by christianm77
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As for more current composers/musicians who evolved past the approaches that Shorter made popular, maybe...Bill McHenry, David Binney, Dave Douglas, Ben Monder, Kenny Wheeler, Chris Speed, Noah Preminger, Vijay Iyer, Walter Smith III...a lot of folks. Wish I had some charts to share but I don't.
Again the Shorter and shortly-post-Shorter era is awesome, some of my favorite music.
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Jack, I want to emphasize I'm not putting down any style of harmony, I think my point is worth making because of just what you say - we tend to be a little "behind" the times. An important aspect of that is even the fact that we might refer to music of the 1970s as "modern." I get that the term distinguishes the music from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and some of the 60s.
So that stuff is great to work on and listen to, and it's cool to note the very large variety of approaches that composers of the last 20 years take..mixing genres, forms, even concepts of how a composition is structured..."free" sections, different forms of "free" improv, etc etc. There's all this great stuff out there. I think Bill McHenry is great...
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THese are all great tunes, some with tricky changes, but I don't think of these as the kind of tunes that Jack is referring to in the OP, except maybe Icarus. Originally Posted by christianm77
My rough (revisionist?) take on the history goes like this
In standards the harmony mostly came first, was diatonic with some modulations, and the melody was diatonic with enclosures
Guys like Shorter and Golson started matching the harmony to the melody rather than the other way around, "loosening" the grip V-I resolutions had on harmony. Mingus also did this in the sense that he changed the process of "playing blues melodies over diatonic chords" to "playing blues chords" under blues melodies.
Then in the 70s, (maybe inspired by pianists use of upper structures/superimposed triads), people started writing tunes melody/harmony/bass lines more or less equal in importance and independent. (This happened in Fusion tunes too).
Of course, nothing can be explained this simply, but I think the kind of tunes Jack refers to are built with melody/chords/bass lines/rhythm on equal footing rather than subservient one to the other, so effective soloing requires addressing all three ingredients rather than just the chord symbols.
Liebman explained his approach in detail in a clinic I attended a few years back. One of the things he said that resonated with me is he thinks of tunes he writes as "problems to be solved". With standards everybody eventually "solves" the problem of blowing over them, so he started writing tunes that required him to find new ways to solo musically over them.
For me, blowing over tunes like this takes hours of practice on each new tune. I was in a band (http://watercourserecords.blogspot.com/p/xtet.html ) a few years ago that played all originals with nary a II-V-I and every tune was a completely new challenge to play on. Typically I worked out "skeleton" ideas, based on certain melodic moves that worked at certain points in the tune, and pitch collections that worked over a few bars. To avoid being repetitive required figuring out a bunch of different approaches to each part of the tune, to avoid resorting to the the same thing each chorus.
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sometimes I think you and I are having totally different conversations. my point is that guitarists typically ignore anything written since 1970. I also have an issue with your contention that the artists you mention have moved "past" Ritchie Bierach and Ronnie Miller. The artists you mention have gone in a different direction for sure. Originally Posted by JakeAcci
Did Monder evolve past John Coltrane? Not sure how you can even quantify that.
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The central point is pretty simple, and we agree on: It's good to acknowledge that there's more to jazz than Miles, Charlie Parker, and the great american songbook. I just think it's good to also acknowledge all the composers that are more recent as well. Pretty simple! I'm not even arguing with you about anything.
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I think people have different definitions of modern too.
For me modern jazz starts sometime in the 50's, after bop.
Contemporary jazz is a large span of time - perhaps including fusion, perhaps not. In the former case that around 40 years of history, which is as long a time span as it took for us to get from the Hot 5s and 7s to In a Silent Way!
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That's pretty heavy when you think of it that way.
No wonder folks in the 50 ' s thought we'd be in flying cars by now...
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what's sad is that I started listening to jazz about 40 years ago.... Originally Posted by christianm77
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Since the 70's, the jazz community has become continually more fractured, and the Real Book collection of tunes ends in that era. Also, fusion and the young lions retro-revival created many detours in the progressive continuum, and consensus on the later jazz canon has really become an matter of opinion.
Who can agree on a modern style standard written in the last 25 years? I don't think it's happening outside of academia. Beyond major urban jazz centers there's little exposure, no viable jazz community or audience. It leaves a lot of musicians at a disadvantage, and the internet offers too much conflicting information for intermediates to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Jack, you say that Inner Urge, Deluge, etc., aren't as harmonically advanced as the the music you're addressing, I'm curious what additional concepts beyond modal and chord scale theory need to be referenced to handle those Ron Miller lead sheets you provided?
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i agree with you "cosmic".
Not sure what your question is. Are you asking what concepts are necessary to play over Ronnie Miller's tune? If so, standard chord/scale theory and analysis of slash chords and polychords as well as the ability to understand how those chords are being utilized within the framework of the tune.
You know, standard white, nerd stuff.
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Completely agree with your analysis Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
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In fact, new standard is a free form modal vamp, as far as I could notice among young musicians, I occasionally meet.
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To have a standard "as we know it", those who play good have to play it in inovative way, over well constructed form, formed around some good essence.
Modern composers put the essence (rhythm and melody) secondary, making complex forms over nothing, hoping the complexity of the form will trigger some inner sense of melody at listener's. Or, they make overly complex melodies, to fit their overly complex form, so nobody can connect, except for nerdy white Jazz guitar students.
Musicians despise the form and go for musicianship, proving themselves in modal vamps.
Authors who are about essence, they are not about complexity and usually are not extremely good musicians.
Therefore, above 2 categories consider them lower beings. So, they go to folk and pop, where hired guns do all the playing as per some dated presets.
Of course, you have the big music industry thing, too, where inovation and excellence have completelly different meaning.
I could spam the thread with my clip "Music is the waste", but I won't, because it has nothing to do with jazz.
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Interesting post. You have summed up a lot of what I've been thinking very clearly.
This was summed up for me below - the Dave Leibman quote about seeing a tune as a problem to be solved. Why not view a tune as a tune? There are some contemporary musicians working in jazz who have this sensibility, in fact, but many see tunes fundamentally as a vehicle for their skills.
In jazz we have some great composers who were in some way limited (but stylistic!) players - that is, not total virtuosos. I'm thinking here of Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Ellington (?) and Monk. These are analogous in some way to the catalysing figures such as Dylan, Lennon, Bowie, Reed, Bjork, Waits etc etc in rock/pop. (You can probably think of some more recent examples :-))
However in classical music, we do have have many examples of highly skilled executants who were also great improvisers and composers - such as Bach, Mozart and Chopin! There are also strong examples in jazz - Kenny Wheeler, Wayne Shorter, Mingus and many others spring to mind. SO the two are not exclusive.
I actually think a bit more concern for either/both the craft of instrumental classical composition (which many tin pan alley song writers had) or songwriting from *words* would help.
Many think that they can write worthwhile music just because they are strong soloists, and some of our really good jazz composers have had some background in classical composition, and most of the jazz standards are simply great songs that anyone can relate to.
One needs to develop your chops in this area with the same intensity as one does anything else.
Originally Posted by Vladan
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There are hundreds of fabulous musicians in places like NYC writing complex, new jazz originals that have tremendous rhythm, melody and harmony. Originally Posted by Vladan
i.e.
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and folks should RUSH out immediately and pick up this album.
Some of he compositions on here are incredibly similar to the "modern" '70s Ronnie Miller writing, harmonically.
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Thanks for the links. I've kept hearing good things about Gilad H, so it was nice to hear a bit of his music. Originally Posted by jzucker
TBH it still sounds like the type of music that jazz guitarists listen to, but being a jazz guitarist, I very much enjoyed it :-)
I'd put my vote in for Aaron Parks, of course. His music is full of attractive tunes. I would say though that this music does start to move in the direction of 'instrumental prog rock.' Not necessarily a bad thing of course, and it might have wider appeal because of it.
(epic Kurt shred is a cheeky bonus)
I also quite like Miles Okazaki, whose music is less song like, but interesting from a compositional point of view.
Not sure how much any of this stuff 'crosses over.' Probably one of the biggest successes jazz has had in popularising contemporary jazz writing in the more-or-less mainstream over the past few years has been EST - how popular were they in the US?
With EST sometimes people get a bit snotty about them, perhaps because they did write melodies and had some mainstream success.Last edited by christianm77; 01-20-2014 at 11:02 AM. Reason: Link fixed
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I'm glad there are so many of them. In context of your original post I have nothing else to say.
However in context of subthread I responded to, which is setting a new standard tunes/ repertoire I have to.
Yes, I'm glad there are so many of them. Now all they have to do is exchange one tune each, ammong themselves, and there will be a 100s of tunes worth of standard repertoire for hundreds of fabulous young musicians. Is there a chance that could ever happen?
Also, if there are hundreds in NYC, how many thousands are there in USA? How many millions all over the world? Is it possible they're all so fabulous? I believe they are, but it's kinda tricky to set on standard with so many fabulous people producing fabulous music.
Maybe we should raise our standards? Maybe I should not think about so many wonderfull players from this forum as of top notch players. Maybe I should level them down on the ladder, and almost everybody else subsequently untill I remain with only couple of fabulous ones? I think it's much more natural state to have couple fabulous, not so many exscellent, ....., plethora of average, ....
Don't you think so?
Back on our "on topic - off topic", Is there any one specific tune from above mentioned that stood above the rest, gaining popularity ammong other jazz musiciaans, if not general public. Anybody ever to call it out on a jam session? Any heavyweight to have it in own repertoire?
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you're totally missing the point. It has nothing to do with whether the tunes are considered "standards" or are part of any particularly agreed upon repertoire. The point is "the music". The fact that guitarists are for a large part ignoring harmonic movement beyond show tunes of the '50s. In the '60s and '70s when folks like Ritchie Bierach and Ralph Towner decided to push the envelope, they didn't sit back and look for "standards". They created their own music.
I don't see this happening in general among jazz guitar fans. They seem content to rehash the tunes from the 40s and 50s. I love those tunes too but am just pointing out that there's an entire world out there that we shouldn't ignore.
Originally Posted by Vladan
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